1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical connector, and particularly to an electrical connector having a plurality of improved terminals.
2. Description of Related Art
Card edge connectors are widely used for electrically connecting an electronic card received therein to a printed circuit board (PCB) to which the card edge connector is mounted. In order to use every possible area of the PCB effectively, surface mounting technology is commonly utilized to mount the card edge connector on the PCB. U.S. Pat. No. 6,227,877, issued to Mou et al., discloses a surface mounting contact assembled to a card edge connector. The contact includes a mounting plate, an arm extending forwardly from the mounting plate for electrically connecting an electronic card, a horizontal retaining portion extending forwardly from the mounting plate into a slot of the card edge connector""s housing, and a horizontal solder tail extending rearwardly from the mounting plate for being surface mounted on a printed circuit board. The retaining portion is formed with a barb interferentially engaged with the housing. However, since the contact has only one retaining portion interferentially retained in the housing, the contact is easy to loose from the housing. Furthermore, the contact easily distorts due to warpage of the housing. It may render that the solder tails of the contacts of the card edge connector are not coplanar with each other, thereby increasing the difficulty of mounting the card edge connector on the PCB.
Hence, an electrical connector with an improved terminal is desired to overcome the disadvantages and problems of the prior art.
An object of the present invention is to provide an electrical connector with a plurality of improved terminals reliably retained in a dielectric housing thereof, thereby ensuring solder tails of terminals thereof to be coplanar with each other.
To achieve the above object, an electrical connector in accordance with the present invention for being mounted on a printed circuit board (PCB) comprises a dielectric housing and a plurality of terminals. The dielectric housing comprises a first wall, a second wall, a slot between the first and second walls and a plurality of passageways communicating with the slot. The second wall defines a first face exposed to the slot and a second face facing outwardly. The terminals are respectively received in corresponding passageways. Each of the terminals comprises a mounting plate, a resilient arm extending from the mounting plate, an first retaining portion and a second retaining portion extending respectively from the mounting plate in a same direction, and a solder tail extending from the mounting plate. The first and second retaining portions engage with the first and second faces of the second wall respectively.